Bavarian Fire Drill
by Zaedah
Summary: The word ‘jurisdiction’ was tossed into the argument, blowing up rational men like a gas station on a volcano.
1. The Bank

_The first of a series..._

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**Bavarian Fire Drill**

It was a bank the first time.

The building, missing only gargoyles to achieve a more arrogantly gothic appearance, housed a stuffy, family-owned financial institution that now featured enough bodies to form a corpse-only softball team. Somewhere between trying to determine how the dead came to be so… hollow and wondering if her partner had ever robbed one, the noise level around Olivia multiplied. The board members arrived, a well dressed and ill-mannered bunch wearing the sort of haughtily perturbed faces only the rich can muster at four am.

The bodies lacked an interior, skin sinking into the cavern that a skeleton would have prevented. The seven pairs of eyes took in the display of all that could go wrong with a person and seemed partially worried about the damage to the carpet and mostly concerned with the bad press. There were demands for a swift, quiet investigation, one that included notifying no one. Not even the family of the victims, the board unanimously required, since they were obviously burglars and therefore would be neither mourned nor missed.

Olivia, clinging to a calming breath, asked them to be escorted to another room. Returning her attention to the nearest blob of human, she noted that the board remained firmly entrenched on the cleaner parts of the rug. Primarily because the speaker declared it.

"Oh no, Miss FBI agent, we're not leaving a vault under the supervision of a crooked organization."

When a limp body was rolled over to the sound of squish, releasing a stream of bodily fluid from its slack mouth, the agents were ordered by the designated speaker to depart and take the inconvenient remains with them. He was on the governor's speed dial, played tennis with the mayor and was worshiped by an unholy host of lawyers. Satan himself would only be a bank teller in their grand empire. This was meant to impress and intimidate while ignoring the commonly held premise that the FBI trumps a man in a smoking jacket.

"Gentlemen," Olivia pleaded, "let us do our jobs." Which was meant to suggest that they retire anywhere that wasn't here, a fact sailing over the inflated heads of the assembled civilians. "We'll do it faster without your input."

The resulting shouting, turning the initial investigation into Insult Mud Wrestling, was halted by a voice rising above the volume.

"There's four camera crews outside," the bellowing man informed. "Reporters saying the board's here as suspects."

Exit three generations of ridiculous money, tripping over their Italian shoes to reclaim their reputations from rumor. A litany of 'this is your fault' and 'why I never's' drifted like cigar smoke behind them. Olivia smiled, an inadvisable expression when one's face hovered over the stench of soggy people. She knew that voice.

Stretchers carrying long, dull black bags fought against the museum-like steps and the caster wheels argued about their cruel treatment. Two boulder-weight cameras followed the deafening progress, filming the unidentified bodies being carted off to what the public might assume would be a certified, upstanding coroner who didn't take self-made, hallucinogenic shakes with his eggs.

Standing on the landing facing a crisp sunrise, Olivia turned to the man currently brushing the stain of heirloom wealth from his coat. He liked money, she knew, but while he wanted it handed to him, Peter never held out his hand. He'd worked for it, snapping the backs of a few laws in the process. The bankers only worked at spending ancestral dimes in exorbitant increments even as they stuck out eager palms for government bailouts.

"What was that about?"

"What?" Of all the things a genius can do, they can't successfully play dumb.

Olivia conducted a stance that, though hands weren't on hips, indicated they might as well be. "Increasing the number of reporters through what the bureau likes to call A Lie."

The man had the good grace to look offended. "Merely an exaggeration."

"That could have compromised the investigation." The conviction of tone was missing. It was too damned early.

False statements were better left to the criminals, she wanted to tell him. That he'd frequently been one kept her from bothering.

Peter paid the emerging sliver of sun a day's worth of attention. "You wanted them gone, right?"

And that she did, because agents are armed with pistols but that family came standard with machine gun attorneys. A blood bath need only happen once a night. Or a de-boning, as the case may be.

Muttering something about social engineering, Peter steered her into a morning that promised loose skin and lengthy interrogations. If asked, Olivia would have to deny knowledge of the person who'd sent the bankers out into a night full of absolutely no cameras. The news vans hadn't arrived for an hour after they'd rushed out to claim an interview. But when Peter slapped an over-rich coffee into her hand, the prospects of the day brightened.

"Just don't do it again."

And expect a lawsuit before it's over.

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**Stay tuned, gentle readers...**


	2. The Factory

_Special thanks to IWasHereMomentsAgo and her fabulous YouTube video, 'Peter Bishop just being generally awesome.'_

_Shall we continue?_

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**Bavarian Fire Drill**

**2**

It was a factory the second time.

When this behemoth was constructed, it was destined to employ the whole of the tiny town. The average local family had at least a father, brother and granny toiling away in the new exercise in mass production. Oversized machinery crammed into undersized spaces spit out an ever-changing line of product, the supply following the demand for generations and keeping the place humming at all hours. Until the gas crisis of the seventies, the small business boom of the eighties and the overseas outsourcing in the nineties. The outdated always becomes an outcast and soon no one would list having worked in the dank old place on their resumes.

The resulting rust, in layers as indiscriminate as snowfall, was so thick it seemed to creak as the air circulated through broken windows. If the very human sense of abandonment had to be filmed on location, this would be the sound stage. Long stairways and their missing steps zigzagged over thin paths still littered with discarded pieces.

This was the kind of fortress that young Olivia would have burned her bra to play in. Jaded, world-weary Olivia couldn't wait to leave. And the tiny man with the badger's face was shoving that wish down her throat in an effort to avoid honest work.

It started off so well; a hostage, a demand and exploding ink rigged inside the drop bag. Peter rolled his eyes at the waste of good currency, pining for the days when the good guys used trimmed newspaper to pad the majority of the bundles. Unfortunately, today's criminals have seen that movie. Everyone inspected the stash, keeping a special guy for the task and invented some lame code word to signify that the cash was good. Still, Peter's gaze trailed the agent currently taking the heavy bag for walkies. Olivia trusted many things about Peter, but not that glint in his eyes. Once they were all loaded up and strapped in (because Olivia never shifted into drive without a seatbelt check) they were off to deliver a nightmare to the first-time ransomer.

Peter is today's criminal, she reminded herself. It was a fine reason to keep hr distance from the mad scientist's son. Not that he cooperated with that ideal, with his 'I care about you's' and timely bar offers. Even as he sat beside her, turning a coin between his knuckles in what he called a nervous tick, she could see a reflection of that drop bag in his eyes. He had words, but she had wisdom.

The caravan of black SUVs entered a tiny town that no map has a small enough dot to represent. Essentially sitting between two telegraph poles, there was a general store to service a populace that had moved closer to Walmart and, of course, the giant stone-and-steel factory.

"It's like the place that time forgot," Peter mumbled as they forsook the air conditioning for the dusty humidity of, as Charlie put it, Absofreakin'lutely Nowhere, Pennsylvania.

Her bureau partner unbuttoned his jacket, revealing a resurgence of his suspender phase. "It's a place I'd like to forget."

"It's the place that someone didn't forget," Olivia gestured to what resembled a freshly thrown human organ, splattered against the double doors with the random brushstrokes of a toddler painting.

A forensics kit materialized in the youngest agent's hand while three others went around the back to secure the exits. Leaving the rookie to scoop up lumps of possible brain matter, Olivia and Charlie unholstered their weapons and slid into the open service door. Knowing that the impulsive Bishop would follow regardless of orders or common sense, Olivia gave him a quick nod, conveying two threats and a promise, before stalking inside. The first thing she noticed, having nearly introduced her forehead to it, was a mammoth vice bracketed to a wall. A note was attached, yellow legal pad bearing the fresh scrawl of someone unused to the blocky mechanics of a carpenter's pencil.

It went unread. The ruckus outside did nothing for her literacy.

Out in the grass-dominated parking lot, a brawl was waiting only for an accidental starting gun to commence. Apparently, the agents that had journeyed to the rear of the building had found every squad car in the county poised with eager yokels waving guns about. The local law enforcement contained every Mayberry extra ever filmed. A hasty raid had been assembled, intending to free the hostage while stampeding purposefully on the hated FBI's toes. The word 'jurisdiction' was tossed into the argument, blowing up rational men like a gas station on a volcano.

The rancid heat stirred Olivia's need for a bath. Clearly she'd have to settle for a blood bath.

A few hearty men stood at the core of the gathering, seething and spitting threats while the rest hovered on the outskirts, waiting for a sign. There were eight FBI agents and one consultant to five sheriffs and twenty two deputies. The way Peter was smiling at the fray, Olivia wondered if he used to bet on fights because he looked ready to place odds. She didn't like grins like that, no matter how admirably it lit the wearer's face. Trouble came with that expression.

"Excuse me." Peter shoved his way through the fracas. "Coming through."

His solid frame made swift progress to the center of the storm, dropping the occasion shoulder to send a uniformed cop stumbling backwards. From her vantage point on the entrance steps, Olivia could see Peter's hand duck into his pocket to produce a folded paper. The lanky sheriff he was aiming for registered the newcomer a second too late.

"You see this?" Peter shouted with enough force to silence the voices. "This is your retirement if you don't get the hell out of our way."

Startled didn't begin to cover the expression distorting the poor hick's face. "But this is our town…"

"Not today." Leaning into the man's personal space, Peter gave the paper a firm shake. "Today is the end of your career if you decide you're brave enough to step on my authority."

Of one accord, the surrounding agents crossed arms over chests, a symbol of solidarity with their impromptu leader. There was a great deal of swallowing, the sheriff's throat bobbing in time with his racing pulse.

"We'll… we'll provide back up support. Yes, that'll be… helpful." The sheriff looked for approval from the man currently staring him down, which Peter followed with the dazzling smile of a true con man.

"Good choice."

Joining Olivia at the service door, Peter struggled to tame the smirk in the poison glow of her displeasure. She tried not to shake her head anymore because the last two minutes had wrenched something in her spine. When they were handing out nerves, Peter must have been swindled three people out of their portion.

The vice was dodged more gracefully this time as she whispered, "What was that paper?"

His grin was growing too big to remain safely on his face. "Receipt for the station wagon's new brakes."

"And if he'd asked to read it?"

She'd stopped walking, a life left hanging in the balance because Peter had all the answers.

"If you talk like you have authority, people will fall into line behind it." He shrugged. "The way of the world, Liv."

"The way of sheep," she countered, knowing he was right.

Who needed authority when you could bluff gold out of trash?

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**More to follow...**


End file.
